I noticed three types of women in Duffy’s collection The World’s Wife. First, the preexisting heroines given a new voice, like “Little Red-Cap,” “Thetis,” “Pilate’s Wife” (Matthew 27:17-19) and others. Second, the apocryphal wives of famous male characters, as in “Mrs Midas” or “Mrs Quasimodo.” The third category is most intriguing to me: the original heroes are re-imagined as women. I think “Queen Kong” and “Queen Herod” belong here. (I’m using the terms heroine and hero somewhat loosely. It’s a matter of perspective. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story, right?)

The speaker of “Queen Herod” styles herself “the King and Queen of here—Herod, me.” She is probably pointing to Herod, then herself. Two. But I also read this as “I am Herod. I am both King and Queen, the one and absolute ruler.” The use of a comma in “Herod, me” makes that just ambiguous enough for that unusual interpretation. Herod is a character in the poem, separate from his queen, but he’s barely relevant. Queen Herod, not her husband, orders her Chief of Staff to kill “each mother’s son.” Contrary to the familiar narrative, she is the dominant figure, eclipsing the supposed king.

Wise men are instead “Three Queens at the Palace gates,” also called “wise,” following a star, looking for a baby boy, riding camels. All the signs are there, but here too the gender is inverted. I didn’t catch this the first time, but they tell Queen Herod to watch for a “star in the East.” They’re from the East (Matthew 2:1-2). They followed the star west to Judea. So are they talking about a different new star?

One more thing: Herod seems to rape the “black Queen” of the three and after this, Queen Herod sends her force of destruction East. This seems like a reenactment of history, where colonial powers from the so-called West effectively rape the cultures distant from them. I don’t think Duffy wants us to sympathize with the brutality of the colonial power.

Sources:

Duffy, Carol Ann. The World’s Wife. Faber and Faber, 2000.

“Queen Herod” pp. 7-10.

Image: La Farge, John. “The Wise Men out of the East.” 1868. Wikimedia Commons.

I couldn’t find any version of “The Wise Women from the East,” but we might at least imagine that the figure on the black horse is Queen Herod, perhaps talking to her Chief of Staff, “a mountain man.”